The main characters are Socrates, the boys Lysis and Menexenus who are friends, as well
as Hippothales, who is in unrequited love with Lysis and therefore,
after the initial conversation, hides himself behind the
surrounding listeners. Socrates proposes four possible notions
regarding the true nature of friendship: 1. Friendship between
people who are similar, interpreted by Socrates as friendship
between good men. 2. Friendship between people who are dissimilar.
3. Friendship between neither-good-nor-bad men and good men in the
presence of evil. 4. Gradually emerging: friendship between those
who are relatives (oikeioi - not kindred) by the nature of their
souls.

In the end, Socrates seems to discard all these ideas as wrong,
although his paralogical refutations have strong hints of irony
about them.